THE GREAT FIRE AT YEDO.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3565, 21 June 1872, Page 3

THE GREAT FIRE AT YEDO.

The Japan Evening Mail gives the following account of the great fire which occurred at the capital on the 3rd inst, and remarks that the only conflagration which could be compared with it took place 18 years ago. Two square miles of a city are laid waste; 30,000 persons arc rendered homeless ,- 10,000 houses have been burnt, and from 250 to 350 persons have been killed. The fire, from all that can be learned, broke out at a quarter-past 3 p.m., on Wednesday, April 3, iu an Aidzu Yashiki, within the second moat of the castle. A gale was • raging at the time, and the sparks and burning shingles spread far and wide. Suddenly the fire jumped, as it were, the two moats, the intervening roads, and a whole block of houses, and and then struck a Japanese house, and with almost the speed of lightning rushed onward towards the Tokaido. Meanwhile the fire also worked in the other direction against the wind and burned up the block of houses which had before escaped. The space between the castle and the Tokaido is now nothing but a heap of ruins, with here and there a mud godown standing uninjured like the ghost of the houses which before surrounded it. Notone stone remains standing on another, not one house has escaped the general destruction; from the Nihon Bashi downward in a line with Tskidji, and from the castle to the sea, is one bare field of desolation and ruin. Crossing tho Tokaido the houses have been burnt in every direction, and tho people .rendered houseless have camped out. Dejected and sorrowful they sit in groups round a mat or blanket on which is spread a little food ; their misery is indeed terrible to witness, and yet with the thousands who arc houseless it is impossible for any but Government to administer relief.

Passing along Kobeeicho street, on the left, opposite Mr Waters’ house was once a mass of houses. Not one remains i all are levelled to the ground; and here the flames have been so intense that some of the mud godowns have even succumbed. On the right, Mr Waters’ house was saved, but next door the Kobusho lias almost entirely disappeared. Again moving on, wo come to the temple of Monseki, of which nothing remains but a bronze vase, which used to stand in the centre of the temple. Walls, roof, everything has gone, and this vase only remains to point out the spot where the temple once stood. The stono wall which runs along the street at this point, had evidently been licked by the flames, for the face of tho stone was calcined, and crumbled away at tho touch. And hero was to bo seen a touching sight. Some poor man, who believed that ho would be sheltered by the wall, had brought all his household property and furniture, aud laid it in the road, when the flame came, and all that was loft was a heap of ashes. Again further on we come to the Trench hotel, of which nothing is left but the cooking apparatus, and piled away in a heap is a mass of twisted iron, onco tho bedsteads of the hotel. Close bv has been another instance of good fortune, for the English consulate and

XTr SiebblcTs bouse bate entirely escaped damage, though tbp palings hat? been burnt in many places. Such good fortune as this is rare indeed, and the only houses within the burnt district which bare been saved are Mr Waters’ and those on the English consulate compound. Looking back from this we see the Custom-house lot, for no Custom-house exists now, the place being filled with the ruins of that long range of building. Here the fire seems to hare stopped on Thursday morning. The foreign concession was saved, and the foreigners living farther away also suffered no loss ; but had the wind shifted, as it threatened to do about 11 o’clock at night, not only the foreign concession, but every house for miles would have been utterly destroyed. This is all that was to be seen on Thursday morning, but the scone witnessed by those who were in Yedo during the fire was horrible indeed. An eye witness tells us that at a quarter past 3 when the fire broke out no one thought anything of it, but as it leaped from block to block, firing at several places at once, the danger was felt to be imminent. The troops in the Yedo Hotel were sent into a place of safety, and several foreigners living in the French hotel removed their baggage to the foreign settlement. Another gentleman who was near the Castle at the outbreak of the fire saw at least 50 persons carried by on stretchers, nearly all dead ; while a third witness, who was in Tskidji, saw great numbers dead, by suffocation or fire. Mothers threw their children away from them—into the water to he drowned or on the ground to bo burnt—and rushed on to save themselves. Two-sworded men, drunk with excitement, cut and hewed in all directions, and the men who were seen disabled by sword cuts were too numerous to count. In contradistinction to this, daughters were to be seen carrying their fathers and mothers away, children just old enough to understand what was going on helped to save their parents from destruction, and what was more touching than all was to see in the distance people fall under their burdens, to be overtaken by the flames before they could rise. Such scenes as these lend an additional horror to a sight already sufficiently terrible, and though at this stage, when all is excitement and uncertainty, the loss of life and property cannot be accurately judged, we feel assured that we have rather under than overstated the extent of the misfortune.

About 10,000 houses were burnt, placing 50,000 people in the open at the lowest calculation. The loss of property must exceed a couple of millions of dollars. The yashiki where the fire originated was in the possession of the War Office, and used by them as a hay store. It was in charge of one man who has, of course, been arrested. Thirty officials of the Foreign Office were burnt out, from the Vice-Minister downwards. Sawa and Date, both of whom have been Foreign Ministers at different periods, were also burnt out, and Date’s son, the ex-Prince of Uwajima. The distress is overwhelming, and a meeting of the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce has taken place, at which a memorial has been sent to the Governor of Kanagawa, expressing the willingness of the foreign community to render such assistance as is in their power.